Music Video Lesson: Why Performers Never Sneeze.

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I'm Robert Estrin. Today, why performers never sneeze? Now this sounds kind of shocking, but think about it. You've been to piano recitals and a solo piano recital they'll play for an hour and a half of music, sometimes more.

And when's the last time you ever saw a performer sneeze? Now coughing, even coughing is pretty seldom, maybe clearing of the throat a little bit. How is it possible that a performer will go through all that time and manage to avoid anything like that? Well, I've got kind of a shocking story for you at the end, but I'm going to talk a little bit about why this doesn't happen. And I think it comes down to the intense concentration. Performers in such a zone that everything is kind of put out including their own physiology.

That I know that I've never sneezed in a public performance and yet, you know, sneezing just happens sometimes, right? You can't control it or can you? Well, here's the story of a former student of mine and if he knew I was telling the story I'm sure he would cringe or die inside. But I'm going to tell the story because it's really interesting and it shows you that there's limits in how much control we have over physiology no matter how much we may be concentrating. Well, this is a very talented student who's gone on to a professional career. At the time he was a teenager and he was playing a recital and doing a fabulous job, just playing magnificently.

And he was in the middle, I think it was in the middle of a Beethoven sonata, if my memory serves me correctly. And at a certain point you could see there was just a little bit of wetness there in his nose and then as he's playing along and there's not a moment, not a rest in this piece that goes on and on and on and the thing gets longer and longer until the thing is hanging down, you know, all the way down and he's just like terrorized playing. You could tell he was dying there but what could he do? He couldn't stop.

So while maybe we can control sneezes sometimes there are things completely out of our control and I felt so bad for him but he played great and he didn't let it affect his performance. That's the amazing thing. He just kept going like a trooper. Of course when it was over he just wanted to get out of there and I'm sure when he watches this video he's going to relive this all over again. But I thought I'd let you know that there are limits but any of you, have you ever been to a piano recital or any instrumental recital where somebody sneezed while playing their instrument? Of course a wind player, this would be a disaster but anybody, a violinist, a pianist, do they ever sneeze? I know I haven't seen it and I've seen a lot as I've just revealed to you. Thanks again for joining me. I'm Robert Ester. If you like these videos consider subscribing, ring the bell, thumbs up, helps the channel, brings more piano videos to lots more people and this is not typical of my piano videos by the way. Check out the channel if you want to see a tremendous range of piano videos for you. Again, Robert Estrin at LivingPianos.com, your online piano store.

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